


The Powers Papers

by bwblack



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, Kid Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-12
Updated: 2011-09-12
Packaged: 2017-10-23 16:27:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/252412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bwblack/pseuds/bwblack
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A young Sherlock first encounters Carl Powers</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Powers Papers

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Phantom Touch challenge at TheGameIsOn_SH

Sunday newspapers were ritual in the Holmes family, the pecking order was set long before Sherlock had been old enough to read, much less understand, the stories reported in them. At two he spent hours circling every ‘S’ in the Telegraph while his father poured over the Financial Times, his mother worked the puzzles in the Times and Mycroft composed angry letters to the editors at the Guardian. When Sherlock finished marking all the plurals and possessives in the paper, and Mycroft noted every out of place apostrophe, everybody passed the paper in front of them to the left and started from page one.

When each paper had been fully examined by all of them, the discussion _hour_ began. This _hour_ usually lasted for the rest of the day, and often felt like it lasted for days, years, or decades. Sherlock’s mother, father, brother and sometimes guests expounded on what they’d read, complained about Parliament, the Prime Minister, taxes, police, and the lowering standards of education, not just in Britain but in every country in the world, alphabetically.

Mycroft always paid such close attention to every word uttered by their father, eager to gain the man’s rare, silent nods of approval. In Sherlock’s memory those sessions were dull, interminably long, and full of terribly pompous, boring blather.

And for what? Nothing was ever solved. No governments were ever toppled, no reform ever enacted, nor any point conceded on any national, or even local, level because they wasted an entire Sunday arguing it!

So, while the rest of the family read every word, Sherlock skimmed. In his head, he plotted the murder of the editor of the Daily Mail. He plotted really fine, near perfect crimes against publishing, but nobody ever wanted to talk about them. The best he could manage was to bring the discussion around to prison reform, dull.

Then, in Sherlock’s twelfth year, Carl Powers drowned. Sherlock read the article with more than his usual interest. He even asked Mycroft to switch papers early so he could read more about the drowning.

Their father cleared his throat, a clear sign he disapproved of the commotion.

“Sherlock always takes an interest in stories involving children, they are the only things he can relate to, it is immature, of course, but he will grow out of it, in time.” Mycroft explained, stupidly. Mycroft had always been a know-it-all, but since entering university he'd become unbearable.

“That isn’t true!” Sherlock narrowed his eyes in anger.

“Isn’t it?” Mycroft asked, as if he were really curious and not purposefully goading his younger brother. “From the time you could first read; the boy in the bubble, the baby with the baboon heart..."

“I am always interested in children who are lucky enough to be out making news instead of stuck inside reading about it.”

“Those children died, Sherlock. Dying isn’t lucky,” Mycroft argued.

“ _And to die is different from what anyone supposed, and luckier_ ,” His father looked up over his paper and quoted a line from poetry.

“Walt Whitman,” Mycroft waved his hand dismissively.

“He was murdered,” Sherlock interjected before they got into the always contentious subject of comparative world literature.

“Walt Whitman was murdered?” Mummy frowned, “I thought he’d had a stroke... or was it tuberculosis?”

“Both, actually…” Father began.

“Carl Powers was murdered!” Sherlock interrupted, although as conversations went, a statistical analysis of the causes of death for poets wasn't too terrible.

“Carl Powers? Murdered?“ Sherlock’s father met his gaze, “Why would you assume that?”

“He was an accomplished swimmer; it being his best event. He wasn’t on record pace so he shouldn’t have been too physically taxed, but still he died, just like that. And what of his shoes? They never found the shoes.”

“You can drown in two inches of water,” his father mentioned this fact often, none of them knew why.

“Carl Powers was murdered.”

“If you’re certain, write a letter to the authorities,” Mycroft loved letters.

“They won’t listen,” Sherlock sighed.

“They can’t listen if nobody is speaking,” Mummy put her pen down signaling the end of her puzzling.

“They’ll listen eventually, Sherlock, when you prove yourself,” Mycroft said.

“They never listen to you at The Guardian, or in the prime minister’s office, or at the BBC or…”

“One day they will,” Mycroft reached for the paper their mother had just finished. “You’ll make them.”

Sherlock wasn’t sure, but he reached for the paper with renewed interest.


End file.
